Mircea frowned and knelt by the man's side. He looked up after only a moment. 'You've made that madman one of us?' he asked incredulously.
Augusta shrugged. 'I'll dispose of him when I'm finished, or you may, if you like, for all the trouble he gave you. But you will have to wait.' She casually stroked the side of Jack's face, an almost tender gesture, and he gave a desperate, broken cry. I realized with sickened disgust that she'd thrust one of those long fingernails through his right eyeball. 'I like this one. He screams so nicely.”
Mircea shook off Jack's hand, which had grasped his trouser cuff in a silent plea, and Augusta dragged her captive back to the center of the space. Better to show him off, I supposed. Mircea glanced at me as I struggled to show no emotion. 'How did you know who he is? Augusta only unveiled him tonight.”
'I heard a rumor,' I managed, after swallowing hard. 'How did you find him?”
'He found us. We were looking for someone else.' Jack screamed as the brunette ground her heel into his groin, and I flinched before I could stop myself. 'She'll grow tired of him quickly enough, once he breaks,' Mircea said. I didn't comment. They would find out soon enough that it's hard to break an already fractured mind.
My attention was diverted from Jack by the sight of two ghostly figures. They had moved from among the assembled spectators into the circle itself, unseen by the crowd. One was the intriguing creature from earlier, still a featureless blob; the other was Myra.
I froze. On the edge of the circle stood the chief pain in my butt in all her spiritual glory. It was easy to recognize her since the only other time we'd met she'd also been in spirit form. I could hardly believe my eyes, especially since she looked healthier than before I'd stabbed her. Her fair hair, which had hung in lank, unwashed strings the only other time we'd met, was combed and shining. Her face was pale but she looked like she'd gained a few much-needed pounds. How the hell had she recovered so fast? 'What are you doing here?' I demanded. Mircea thought I was talking to him. 'You wished to see Augusta. There she is, safe and sound.”
'To right a wrong, of course.' Myra 's voice was high and sweet, like a child's. It didn't go well with her expression. If looks could kill, I'd already be out of her way. 'Isn't that what we were trained to do?' She was staying near the brunette, not coming any closer. I wasn't sure whether that was because Augusta was there, too, or because the brunette's body offered her a shield from my knives. I freed my hand from Mircea's cloak, just in case, but he caught my wrist.
'That is a pretty trinket you're wearing, but I would not advise sending anything deadly at Augusta. You can see what she does to those foolish enough to attack her.' I ignored him. 'What wrong?”
'Oh, but I forgot,' Myra added sweetly; 'you weren't trained, were you? How dreadful.”
That singsong voice was really starting to get on my nerves. 'This isn't a game, Myra.”
'No,' she agreed. 'It's a contest, for very high stakes. The highest, you might say.'
'Meaning what?”
Mircea followed the line of my gaze but of course saw nothing. 'To whom are you speaking?”
'Meaning you aren't fit to be Pythia.' She regarded me out of eyes that were such a pale blue, they were almost white. I assumed they weren't that light when she was in her body, but at the moment it was creepy. 'Agnes was old and dangerously unstable when she appointed you. If her decision had gone through the usual review process, she'd have been laughed out of the hall. But she skipped all that, didn't she? She went behind everyone's backs and fucked up a system that's been in place for thousands of years. I'm here to fix that.”
'By killing me?”
'Nothing so crude. Let me give you a little lesson, your first and last, all in one,' she said pleasantly. 'Any being that travels in linear time is defined by its past. Take that past away, or change it, and you redefine that being.' She smiled, but there was acid in it. 'Or do away with it completely.”
'I know that.' What I didn't understand was why she was here, in this time. If Augusta had just turned Jack, then it looked like I was back in the 1880s. If Myra wanted to change my past, she was a little early. 'Do you have a point?”
'What is happening?' Mircea demanded, looking back and forth between the vampires and me as if he realized he was missing something.
'Do I have a point?' Myra mimicked. 'God, you're thick. I know first-year initiates who catch on faster!”
She glanced at Mircea, and I tensed. I really didn't like her expression. 'If you want to kill me, why attack him?”
'You still don't get cause and effect, do you?' Her voice held genuine astonishment. 'Let me spell it out for you. Mircea protected you most of your life. Why do you think Antonio never lost his temper and killed you? Why did he open his arms and welcome you back after you ran away? If Mircea is removed, his protection is removed. And that means you die, long before you become a problem for me.”
The ghostly creature behind Myra jerked slightly, as if it didn't like this information any better than I did. It moved those huge eyes back and forth between the two of us, its color shading from a silvery hue to dark purple. Odd flutterings starting around the edge of its diaphanous shape and, with no further warning, it changed. The pale, almost featureless face grew a mouthful of deadly-looking fangs, and the eyes flooded with dark red, like old blood. I stared at it in shock, but Myra didn't seem to notice. Or maybe she thought I was grimacing at her.
'And did Agnes become a problem for you?' I demanded. I was assuming that Myra had been the woman at the theatre who had poisoned Mircea's wine. How she'd recovered so fast I didn't know, but if she was here, then she could have been there. And it wasn't as if there were a lot of other contenders. I couldn't know whether the poison she'd used was the same kind that had killed Agnes, but the similarity in method was interesting. 'Is that why you killed her?”
Myra laughed as if I'd said something genuinely funny. 'That's against the rules, or didn't you know?' she asked. Then she stepped into the brunette's body and disappeared.
Mircea gripped my upper arms. 'Are you mad?”
'The brunette,' I gasped. I didn't say any more, because the vamp Myra had possessed suddenly hurtled herself at Mircea. He grabbed her around the throat before I had a chance to blink, holding her away from him. She twisted and fought, but her reach wasn't quite long enough. Not that it would have made any difference if it had been. Apparently, to Myra a vamp was a vamp. She didn't understand that the brunette was a child compared to Mircea, and that he could break her as easily. But she was a fast learner. In less than a minute, Myra flew out of the woman, disappearing into the crowd.
The brunette collapsed, sobbing, clutching Mircea's feet and begging for forgiveness almost incoherently. 'She was possessed-she didn't know what she was doing,' I told him.
He lifted the hysterical vamp to her feet and looked at me over her head, his face darkening with anger. 'Vampires cannot be possessed!”
I thought of Casanova but decided not to debate the point. 'Not by most things,' I agreed, my eyes on the crowd, which had grown with the advent of violence.
I'd invaded a vamp before, a first-level master. The difference was that I'd done it by accident, not knowing about that facet of my power, and almost scared myself to death. It hadn't done him much good either. But Myra could obviously manage it at will, and there was a whole roomful of vampires for her to choose from.
'What is out there?' Mircea pushed the sobbing vamp towards Augusta -her master, I assumed-and started to examine the crowd himself, those quick dark eyes taking it in, no doubt memorizing the faces. Too bad that sort of thing wouldn't help.
I didn't have to answer, because a woman who might have walked straight out of Versailles, in cream-colored panniers and a two-foot-tall headdress, lurched out of the crowd. She didn't make a beeline for Mircea as I'd expected, but staggered drunkenly about the circle, careening into Jack, who was huddled off to the side, trying to disappear into the shadows. They went down in a tumbled mass, naked, dirty legs entwined with embroidered satin, until Augusta snatched up his leash and yanked him away.
The vamp didn't get up, but stayed in the middle of the floor, limbs thrashing, head rolling, eyes showing white. It looked like she was fighting the possession, trying to throw Myra out. If she succeeded, it would really help. My knives could rip through flesh as easily as spirit, but I couldn't risk attacking when Myra was clothed in someone else's body. Her puppets might not deserve an untimely death, not to mention what it would do to the timeline.
Several vamps started toward the woman, looking concerned, and I grabbed Mircea's arm. 'Get them back! I can stop this if I get a clear shot.”
'No! You are not killing the host merely-”
